The arrangements adopted concerning the Temple Mount which Secretary of State John Kerry oversaw will not bring peace and quiet, will not assist in apportioning blame in the future (in fact, the screaming banshees were back on Sunday) and have sunk America to a new low as to whether its commitments to allies hold solid.In assigning blame to Israel when the Islamic claims are so outrageous, so irrational, so non-liberal, so negating any humanist values which America upholds in addition to the violation by Jordan of the spirit of Article 9 of the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty.
Jews do that, too. Left-wing Jews. Here is JJ Goldberg, Habonim graduate and The Forward staff describing members of the Temple Mount Jewish rights’ campaign:
a very lively Israeli movement seeking to end the status quo, first by permitting Jewish prayer, eventually by rebuilding Solomon’s Temple and restoring animal sacrifice. Well-funded institutes in Jerusalem are preparing the sacrificial implements and training hereditary priests in their use. It was once a lunatic fringe. Today it’s a growing movement with strong support in the Orthodox community.
Would he describe the Islamists so? Would he dare to do so? And why not?
But let us return to Kerry speaking in Amman:
…I hope that based on these conversations we can finally put to rest some of the false assumptions, perceptions about the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. Those perceptions are stoking the tensions and fueling the violence, and it is important for us to end the provocative rhetoric and to start to change the public narrative that comes out of those false perceptions.
Those words, and the thoughts behind them, do not go far enough to define the Islamists as obscurantist irrational fanatics although Hamas now thinks he has been consolidating Israel’s hegemony over the Temple Mount.
Of course, one could point out another anomaly that should unsettle Western diplomats - that Jordan rejected camera surveillance two years ago, probably because it didn't want to be seen as cooperating, and thereby somehow recognizing, Israeli control and/or sovereignty over the Temple Mount and all Jerusalem. So which is it: yes, cameras or no cameras?
How hallucinatory can the Islamic narrative be? Well, there’s this:
Most scholars are of the opinion that Masjid Al Aqsa was first built by Prophet Adam...Ibrahim (as) rebuilt the Masjid Al Aqsa in Jerusalem as he and Ismail rebuilt the Ka'ba in Makkah...Prophet Daud (as) began the rebuilding of Masjid Al Aqsa...It was Prophet Sulayman (as) who finally completed the building of Masjid Al Aqsa…The al Buraq wall or Western Wall where Prophet Muhammad tied his animal (the Buraq) on the night journey of al Isra is what the Jews call the wailing wall…The sacred area of Bayt al-Maqdis (Al-Aqsa) has within it the Main Prayer Hall of Masjid Al Aqsa [Black Domed Building] and Dome of the Rock Building [the Golden Dome Building]…The Zionist Jews have made 100's of attempts to destroy Al Aqsa since 1967 when they occupied it. A fire in 1967 started by their help and destroyed the 900 year old Mimbar installed by Salahudeen Ayyubi, the Great Muslim Hero.
Can one discuss solutions, arrangements and rights with such an approach, with such 'creative' thinking?
Melanie Phillips is on target with this column of hers where in she asks why Israel never acknowledged that the wellspring of the Arab onslaught against it lay in Islamic extremism and she was answered that basically, for all practical purposes,
It was far more comfortable that Israel's policies instead should be blamed…Mahmoud Abbas lit the fires of paranoid hysteria by telling the incendiary lie that Israel intended to allow Jews to pray on Temple Mount (the fact it forbids them has always passed without comment, of course) and even to destroy al Aqsa.
And she correctly adds
if there is one thing even worse than seeing Jews targeted for murder at the hands of those inflamed by demonisation redolent of both Nazi obscenities and the medieval Christian pogroms, it is the contempt for their plight shown by westerners who instead present the Jews' Arab killers as their victims.
There is another aspect, as my friend Elder highlighted, that disallowing prayer by Jews there may be an infraction of international law.
But does anyone care? Not Kerry. He couldn’t care because, when Jews and Israel are involved, it is we who must knuckle under to the most ridiculous claims. Why has the world's foremost democracy and champion of civil liberties and human rights, the country whose administration is not only deeply liberal but even progressively so, is kowtowing to a bunch of religious fanatics in agreeing that one religious group cannot pray at a scared site that was sanctified centuries before the second religious group came into being?
Here is the Temple Mount Mufti:
The grand mufti of Jerusalem said in an interview with an Israeli television station that there has never been a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There has been a mosque on the site “since the creation of the world,” Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, who is in charge of the holy Muslim Al-Aksa Mosque, said Sunday evening
Moreover, Muslims, while seeking to prevent Jews from praying, are doing the exact opposite in Cordoba, Spain. Does Kerry point this contradiction to them and ask them why what they demand in Spain they refuse Jews in Jerusalem?
Another related matter is the acceptance by the United States of the Arab position that the open spaces on the Temple Mount cannot be neutral areas. Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh told Kerry, at Saturday’s press conference:
…when we say Al-Haram al-Sharif it is the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. People sometimes mistake the Al-Aqsa Mosque for one building. It is the compound. It is the 144,000 square meters that we are talking about, which is one of the holiest shrines of Islam
And he added, obviously to threaten Kerry
when you infuriate the emotions of one of our billion Muslims around the world, things become rather thorny and rather difficult to manage, because people stop thinking with their heads and start thinking with their heart.
And what if Israel acted a bit crazy? Would that be taken under advisement and then pressure would be placed on the Arab side a bit more equally.
The Palestinian Authority is also flexing muscles and
has warned Israel that it will soon halt security coordination with the IDF in the West Bank unless the Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount are given full administrative control over Jewish groups visiting the holy site…“Israel must restore control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf (Muslim trust),” said one official close to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. “This is one of the only measures that can help calm the current situation.”
“Only”? Everything is on their side?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday, October 25, remarked:
"I made clear in my talks with Secretary of State John Kerry that there will be no change in the status quo. The Temple Mount will remain as is and will be managed as it is now. Arrangements for visits by Jews to the Temple Mount are safeguarded; there will be no change in them, just as the prayer arrangements for the Muslims.
But as we know, that status quo is so very unstatic.
demanded "international protection" for the occupied Palestinian territory during a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Amman on Saturday...Abbas also said that the division of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound into Jewish and Muslim areas with specific visiting times was not an option -- a position echoed by Jordanian King Abdullah II, who was also present at Saturday's meeting...Erekat said...Large numbers of right-wing Jews toured the compound during a succession of Jewish holidays in September, in a provocation that triggered much of the unrest that has swept the occupied Palestinian territory this month.
In the end, the more Jews clamor for their rights and recognition in connection with the Temple Mount and to it, the more the Muslims are reminded that they are conquerors and occupiers in Jerusalem, that the Dome of the Rock was built as a memorial to the Jewish Temple which preceded it and that all their historical reconstruction of events is false and artificial. As is their nationalism viv a vis “Palestine”. It is all made up.And the longer Kerry and Co. tolerate this balderdash, the longer the 'conflict' will go unresolved. And the more the threat to lives, of us all.^